North Brother Island - Port Morris New York City (From Archive- July 3rd)

This was a great city paddle. Launched at Baretto Point  Park in the south Bronx. It was a sunny day,on the rising tide.

A sizable jellyfish

I headed straight for the island, with the Manhattan backdrop slowly drawing closer as I paddled.

from Wikipedia ...North Brother Island,was uninhabited until 1885, when Riverside Hospital moved there from Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). Riverside Hospital was founded in the 1850s as the Smallpox Hospital to treat and isolate victims of that disease. Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases.

The island was the site of the wreck of the General Slocum, a steamship which burned on June 15, 1904. Over 1,000 people died either from the fire on board the ship or from drowning before the ship was beached on the island's shores.

Typhoid Mary was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in 1938.The hospital closed shortly thereafter.

After World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges, along with their families. After the nationwide housing shortage abated, the island was once again abandoned.

In the 1950s a center opened to treat adolescent drug addicts. The facility claimed to be the first to offer treatment, rehabilitation, and education facilities to young drug offenders. Heroin addicts were confined to this island and locked in a room until they were clean. Many of them believed they were being held against their will (as one person wrote on the wall). By the early 1960s widespread staff corruption and patient recidivism forced the facility to close.

The island is currently abandoned and  off-limits to the public.Most of the hospital's original buildings still stand, but are in danger of collapse. A dense forest  conceals many of the ruins and supports the area's largest colony of Black-crowned Night Heron

Heading back to the launch, I decided to go a little further down into Long Island Sound. I passed the boat ramp and headed towards the floating swimming pool . Before I knew it I was moving swiftly  in a current away  from the boat ramp, and I was hardly paddling. Fortunately  I realized in time, because after turning to return, it took me all my power to make the distance back to Baretto Point. It  was a little scary, yet highly  educational ,  to realize how easily one could be swept  away from one's destination.
Needless to say, I continue to develop a better sense of the realities of paddling in and around tidal waters in New York

Launch Sweet Launch - Safe and sound